firecracker ???

The next morning, Lucius found out.

It was early, the sky outside still rinsed with mist, when the house erupted in tension. Lyra had barely finished her tea when a house-elf—one of the outer staff—arrived trembling, eyes wide, to report what Dobby had done. That he had left the grounds. That he had returned with signs of contact. That something had been delivered.

Lyra folded her hands in her lap, the porcelain cup balanced perfectly between her fingers as a strange stillness settled over her chest. She'd known it would come eventually—the reckoning—but it still arrived faster than she expected. She had always assumed it would be her father who unearthed the truth, but the speed and silence of it made her stomach turn with something that felt too close to guilt.

Lucius entered the drawing room like a blade unsheathed. He said nothing at first. Just looked at Dobby, silent and glacial, as though measuring the depth of the offense in the air around him.

Then he spoke.

"You interfered."

Dobby whimpered.

"You risked our name. You betrayed your house."

Dobby dropped to his knees, pleading, babbling. He spoke of letters and warnings, of doing what he thought was right. His voice trembled and cracked, his hands wringing at the hem of his tunic like they could change the past.

Lyra didn't flinch. The words rang familiar—like echoes in marble halls, part of the house's very structure. She could feel the quiet rage building in the walls.

Lucius raised his cane. The blow never landed.

"Enough," he said instead, voice like steel cooled in water. "You're no longer mine. You're nothing."

He turned and gestured to one of the house-elves standing silently by the door. "Bring him a sock."

There was a sharp intake of breath. The elf vanished with a pop and returned moments later with a small black silk sock folded neatly in its palm. Lucius didn't even look at it. "Give it to him."

The sock was pressed into Dobby's shaking hands. A heartbeat later, the bond snapped. Dobby burst into tears. The silence in the room became deafening.

Lyra sat unmoving. She didn't blink. Her hands remained perfectly still on the arms of her chair, her gaze level. But something in her tightened, wound around the bones of her spine like wire. She hadn't expected it to feel quite so final.

Later, as the freed elf was led away by another servant, Draco leaned against the bannister and watched his sister with a small, crooked grin.

"Cold, Lyra. Even for you."

She arched a brow. "You think I should've cried?"

"Maybe flinched."

"He was stupid."

Draco smirked. "So are you, sometimes. Should I flinch for you?"

She smiled sweetly. "You'd fall over from the effort."

They left it at that, but the tension hadn't truly dissipated, only curled behind their ribs. Lyra didn't admit—not even to herself—that something small and uncertain had twisted inside her when she watched the sock pass into Dobby's hands. Not regret. Just the unease of things that couldn't be undone.

-

Harry Potter sat cross-legged on his bed with the letter in his hands and his mouth slightly open. It had come without warning, slipped under his door by something small and invisible, arriving in the middle of the night with all the weight of a miracle. The air in his room had shifted the moment he opened it. It was the kind of letter that made time hold its breath.